


The Day That Followed

by karuvapatta



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, End of the World, Other, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 21:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20896487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karuvapatta/pseuds/karuvapatta
Summary: Heaven won the War. Now they must deal with whatever remained of the Legions of Hell.





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t a war anymore. It was reaping day; the very last of all days.

Gabriel, Michael, Sandalphon, Uriel, they were all here already, bathed in heavenly glow. Aziraphale landed among them, heavily, his wings drawn out and his corporeal form tired, weak, bloodied. He had no desire to make it more presentable.

They looked at him with contempt and distaste, which was pretty much how they had looked at him before.

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel said. “We thought you might want to be here for this.”

Something about the tone of his voice made Aziraphale shiver. For the first time in months, he could feel the stirring of genuine emotion within him. It took him a moment to identify it as fear.

“See what?” he asked.

What else was there to see? Heaven obliterated the Legions of Hell, burning the Earth in the process. It was ashes now, everything was ash, almost as if it had never existed in the first place—

But Aziraphale remembered. He couldn’t stop remembering. And now, fittingly, in the last day of the world, they were reunited. Himself and Crowley.

The demon was kneeling on the ground, black wings wrapped loosely around him. He raised his head when he heard Aziraphale’s voice and, impossibly, began to smile.

“Hey, angel,” he said. “Bit of a downer, isn’t it?”

Without a word, Sandalphon struck him across the back of the head with the shaft of their halberd.

“Even faced with death, the demon refuses to repent for his crimes,” Gabriel said, shaking his head.

“And if he did,” Aziraphale said, shocked to hear his voice so calm, so steady, “would you let him go?”

Uriel and Sandalphon exchanged contemptuous glances. Michael pursed her lips. Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“I see,” Aziraphale said. “Why did you call me here?”

Crowley wasn’t trying to say anything else. He was looking at Aziraphale, however, his serpentine eyes wide-open and vulnerable. As if he hoped to convey everything they didn’t have the time to say to one another in a single, final glance.

“You should be here,” Michael said softly. “To witness the final moments of your worst enemy, yes?”

“It will put your mind at ease,” Gabriel said.

Aziraphale hated how sincere the Archangel sounded. Michael knew what they were doing; this was a punishment, Aziraphale was sure of it, even if he couldn’t even begin to imagine what sin had lead him to this moment. Gabriel, though – Gabriel believed what they were doing was _right_.

There were so many emotions Aziraphale didn’t have the capacity to feel anymore, and none of them mattered. What mattered was this, Crowley, and the way he drank in the sight of Aziraphale’s face.

“Do you want me to be here?” Aziraphale asked quietly.

“It’s a bit selfish to ask, isn’t it?” Crowley offered him a faint smile. “Luckily, I’m a demon. I get to be selfish.”

Aziraphale stepped between Gabriel and Michael, Sandalphon and Uriel. They didn’t try to block his path, and if they did, well. Aziraphale had a sword, too. They liked to forget that.

He reached out his hand. Crowley took it without hesitation, their palms curling warmly around each other’s forearm. Injured though he was, Crowley managed to stand while Aziraphale did most of the lifting.

“Rise,” he whispered, not sure if Crowley could even hear him. “Rise—”

Crowley wound his arms around his neck, his wings around them both. Aziraphale saw the alarmed look on the other angel’s faces, before the black feathers obscured his view. Besides, he didn’t want to look; he didn’t want anything anymore, save to freeze time in this very moment. When it was just him and Crowley, pressed tight against one another. The two of them, together, the way it always had been; the way it should be, if the world was a kinder place.

There was so much to say, but the first thing that Aziraphale managed was an apology.

“I can’t fight them all—”

“I know,” Crowley said. “’s fine.”

“My dear, it is anything but that—”

Crowley only held him tighter.

“Do it,” he asked hoarsely.

Aziraphale pulled back, shocked, to look into his eyes.

“Please, angel,” Crowley repeated. “I want it to be you.”

On some level, he had expected this. He—he wanted this, too. If their roles were reversed, Aziraphale most certainly would have asked the same of Crowley. Would have gladly placed his life in Crowley’s hands, because he knew it would be safe there.

Maybe it could still happen. Maybe—

“Swap with me,” he said. “Now. Before they notice. Please—”

“No, angel,” Crowley said, in a gentle, firm tone.

Aziraphale didn’t even know if they could do it without the archangels’ knowledge. He didn’t know if there was room enough for two souls in a single body—but, no. No. There was. He knew there was. He had carried a part of Crowley with him for thousands of years; he supposed Crowley felt the same. They had grown and changed together, even though angels are demons weren’t meant for either of these things. They shared so much of their lives, it was inevitable that whatever separated them would begin to blur along the way.

And now Crowley was asking him to sever that connection. As if one, clean strike could undo thousands of years. As if there was enough space left between them for Aziraphale’s blade to slip through, killing one but not harming the other.

He wondered if Crowley had realized this. Probably not. He might not have asked, if he did.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, softly, and for the final time.

“Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale smiled, and didn’t look away as he drove the sword through Crowley’s heart. Continued to smile afterwards, as Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder, as Michael looked reluctantly impressed.

There was blood on his blade, dripping onto the ground beneath his feet. There was the demon, sinking to his knees, the light slowly dying in his eyes. And the angel who watched it happen, stoic, calm.

He didn’t care that Crowley was dead. He no longer felt anything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sort of a bonus chapter.

“Aziraphale.”

He wouldn’t have responded to anyone else, save God Herself. It might have shocked him, to hear Her voice after six thousand years of silence, had he still been capable of shock.

“Lord,” he said.

“I have a job for you, Aziraphale.”

“You will have to find someone else to do Your will, Lord,” Aziraphale replied calmly into the pillar of blinding light. “I’m done.”

The light shimmered, coursing through him in waves. It was sound and silence, light and darkness, everything and nothing, all spun together into one, impossible particle; infinity, cut into miniscule fragments, each one infinite for all that it was just a tiny part of that infinity.

“There is no one else,” the Almighty said.

Aziraphale felt an overwhelming surge of grief. Not his own, as his grief was all spent. But he felt it with every fibre of his being, and the tears that came with it.

The tears God couldn’t cry herself. So She was using him. How typical.

“What is it?” he asked sharply.

He wanted to be left alone, numb and empty. He didn’t want to be a vessel for God’s remorse.

“All things must end, Aziraphale,” the Almighty said. “Everything ends. Everything begins.” For the brief silence, Aziraphale was flooded with images he couldn’t make sense of. Life and death, tied together into an incomprehensible pattern. And, for just a moment, he saw himself _outside _of it. He saw the world as God must have seen it; as an impartial observer.

For a moment, the patterns made sense. Aziraphale fell to his knees and screamed.

“I am the beginning of all things,” the Almighty went on. “You will be the end of them, Aziraphale. You will be Creation’s shadow.”

“Why?” Aziraphale asked, wordlessly, as speech eluded him.

“Because you understand death. You felt it.”

Everything was bleeding together. All he saw was light.

“Now you will become it.”

Beyond the light was the darkness; it surrounded it, _defined _it. It existed, so that light could exist.

“Give him back to me,” Aziraphale said, clinging to the last remaining threads of consciousness.

Surely he was asking too much. Surely God wouldn’t.

“I will,” the Almighty said.

“Then I will do as you ask,” Aziraphale said.

He embraced the darkness as it swallowed him whole. And then it spread, everywhere, devouring everything in its path until nothing remained.

Nothing; nothing, but a single spark of light.

And then the world began anew.


End file.
